Education reporter

College administrators and teachers from all over the state will come to the University of Georgia’s campus Monday and Tuesday for a summit meeting on the state’s new “Complete College Georgia” project.

Launched late last year, the Complete College Georgia initiative aims to get the state’s two big public college systems working together to produce more college graduates. More than half a million students signed up for classes in either the Technical College System of Georgia or the University System of Georgia last year.

Athens Technical College and 24 other Georgia technical colleges reported an overall student enrollment of 189,216 last fall. The 35 colleges in the University System of Georgia, including the University of Georgia, reported an enrollment of 318,027.

Only about one in four students complete undergraduate or associate degrees on time.

Officials want to pump up the percentage of those who complete a degree on time and the number who complete a degree overall.

Teams from all 60 colleges are supposed to come up with plans to increase graduation rates on their individual campuses, then turn those ideas over to Gov. Nathan Deal by Sept. 1.

Teams will begin to compare notes at next week’s summit at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, however, said David Morgan, interim chief academic officer for the University System of Georgia.

The conference begins Monday morning with talks by the chief academic officers of each of the two college systems as well as outside experts. In addition, conference participants will hear the opinions of 20 students in both systems, who have been asked to say what does and does not work in terms of helping them complete college degrees.

Then, the teams will get to work devising plans for their colleges.

“While the thoughts and ideas expressed in the session are still fresh, the teams will begin to construct their institution’s completion plans, which will then be taken and shared at each campus for further work and final approval,” Morgan said.